Puppets (26 page)

33

T
HE INSIGHT ABOUT Irene Bushnell's schedule was the most tangible idea to follow up on, especially after Mo called Byron Bushnell and learned that, yes, Irene worked Monday afternoons, Byron didn't know where, and came home at around five-thirty. So on Wednesday Mo dispatched Mike St. Pierre to Ossining again to meet with Mrs. Ferrara and the Tomlinsons, try to pin down where Irene had been going after she left the Tomlinsons' house at one o'clock Mondays.

Mo felt a little better. When an investigation got down to questions this specific, even with a detail this small, it usually meant you were getting somewhere. And by Wednesday night, after hearing what Mike had discovered and having had another tough interview with Byron Bushnell, he was sure they were onto something useful.

He'd have liked to follow up on it first thing Thursday, but the day would be occupied with something else that couldn't wait: Ronald Parker and the larger issues he'd been advised to avoid, the hidden pattern he had glimpsed during his sunset pilgrimage to the marsh.

The chief of staff at the psychiatric detention facility at the County of New York prison complex at Rikers Island had agreed to give them access to Ronald Parker at one o'clock. Rebecca proposed that they drive over together, but Mo had to attend a BCI staff meeting on unrelated issues at eleven. They decided to rendezvous at the prison at twelve-thirty.

Mo caught sight of her from a distance as he came into the prison's main administrative lobby: a tall woman with a Hollywood figure that looked out of place in this institutional setting. She took a few steps, paused impatiently, turned, strode again, not seeing him yet. For the interview with Parker, she had dressed in a pinstripe business suit and high heels and had coiled her hair at the back of her head. But the severe outfit only seemed to enhance her femininity, Mo thought.
Can't hide the real thing.

She didn't smile when she saw him, just searched his face with her eyes, and he realized how nervous he was about seeing her again. They'd talked on the phone twice since Sunday, and each time it had seemed a little stiff or awkward. Maybe it was some kind of fallout from his meeting Rachel, maybe he'd flunked some kind of test. Maybe seeing him with her daughter had shown Rebecca what lousy stepfather material he was. Strange, how four days apart could change things.

"So how you been?" he asked. They shook hands. Professional colleagues.

"Busy. Too much so. Yourself?"

"Same."

"How's Rachel?"

"Oh, fine, fine."

Awkward, uncomfortable, stilted,
Mo thought.

They turned toward the admitting desk, signed in, received visitor's badges, and were escorted through a metal detector to a smaller entry room where guards patted them down. Then they waited as one of the guards paged Dr. Iberson, head of the psychiatric unit. The guards stood with hands folded, and nobody said anything. Rebecca opened her briefcase to review a file and check her microcassette recorder.

Mo sat uncomfortably, feeling the crushing claustrophobia of the prison complex around him. Not a happy place. People arrested in the County of New York were ostensibly held here pending trial, but everybody in law enforcement knew it was where you could send someone for a prison term without them ever getting a trial. Prosecutors convinced of someone's guilt but without enough evidence to convict just stalled, postponed trial dates, and finessed paperwork until the suspect had served a few years anyway. Then they'd release him due to lack of evidence. Due process in the new millennium.

Dr. Iberson turned out to be a very tall, thin man, the played-basketball-in-college type, with a pink scalp under thinning hair. He shook Mo's hand perfunctorily, but gushed over Rebecca, telling her he had followed her career with interest. Then he led them to an elevator.

The three of them stepped inside, Rebecca between the two men, and stood facing the doors as the car rose. As Dr. Iberson babbled psychology shop talk, Mo felt his frustration rise. If he were alone in the elevator with Rebecca, he'd grab her and hold her against him and kiss her deeply, maybe she'd like that and maybe she wouldn't,

but for better or worse they could sort it out from there. He knew where his own awkwardness was coming from. Some of it was the horror of the revelations he'd had in the swamp, the danger it posed. But more it was four days of thinking about her: She had percolated into him, everything felt very
important.
It was hard to know where to begin. He had no idea what she was feeling, but he knew four days could also let uncertainties and second thoughts creep up on you.

He startled as something touched his back. Rebecca was nodding interestedly at whatever Iberson was saying, but her hand had come up beneath Mo's jacket and shyly tugged at his shirt. She burrowed two fingers down just below his belt at the small of his back and just held the contact.
Hello, it's me.
A secret affirmation. Mo smiled as he felt heat spread from her touch.

"Ronald is in our equivalent of intensive care," Iberson told them as he led them through another sliding steel door. "You'll understand when you see him. His injuries are over four months old, but we're still observing his behavior to monitor his rehabilitation. Also to assess the degree of risk he poses to himself and others. The way the unit is configured, he's under observation by medical staff twenty-four hours a day."

"Are you seeing any adaptation?" Rebecca asked. For Mo's benefit, she explained, "The loss of brain function due to injury is often reversible. Sometimes the damaged area recovers partial function, and sometimes the brain appears to compensate by reassigning damaged functions to other neural circuits."

Iberson nodded. "His motor skills are mostly back. Verbal skills, he carries on a private monologue all the time, but his responsiveness to others is intermittent—possibly because he gets temporal-lobe seizures. It's hard to assess, because when he does talk, he's usually pretty dissociative. One problem is that we don't know how much is the result of the brain damage he inflicted on himself and how much was preexisting." Iberson was having the time of his life, Mo thought: medical shoptalk with a gorgeous woman, the best ofall possible worlds.

They came to another steel door operated by a guard in a glass cubicle. He frowned as he double-checked Mo's identification. Then the door slid open to reveal a big, brightly lit room where a nurse sat at a central desk, doing paperwork. Two walls of the room were made of clear Lexan and heavy wire mesh, beyond which were the individual cells, apparently furnished in standard hospital-room decor.

"Well!" Iberson said brightly, rubbing his hands briskly together. "Here we go."

But Rebecca put her hand on his arm. "Dr. Iberson, we may need to request specific medical examinations or tests of Mr. Parker after our interview. Would that be possible?"

Iberson beamed. "We've done a pretty thorough workover, and you're welcome to see his files, but sure. What're you looking for?"

"We would also like to interview him in his own quarters. We believe he'll be more at ease, more communicative, and we may be able to learn things from his environment—"

"Like the arranging? I assumed you would. Ronald is the only resident of the unit just now, so you won't be disturbing other patients—"

"And we'd like to interview him alone. Just Detective Ford and myself, no staff present."

Iberson's smile faded.

Rebecca patted his arm. "It's just that the smallest number of interviewers offers the least disturbance to the subject." She dropped her voice confidingly. "And there are also issues of confidentiality regarding an ongoing investigation that's very sensitive. I'm sure you can appreciate that."

Iberson frowned in confusion, liking her touch but resenting being excluded. He nodded, led them into the room, pointed out Ronald Parker's cell, showed them how to use the intercom if they needed assistance.

When he and the nurse were gone, Mo said, "I think you may have just lost a fan."

Rebecca just squared her shoulders and gave him a look. Then they carried folding chairs to the door of Parker's cell.

Mo's first impression of a typical hospital room proved to be wrong. Yes, there was the standard adjustable bed, a bank of monitoring equipment, oxygen fixtures, a television mounted on a bracket high on the wall. But the equipment was built in and covered with Lexan, the TV protected by a Lexan box. The bedding was paper of a texture like quilted paper towels, suicide-proof. No windows. There were no drawers for personal effects beneath the enameled counter.

Ronald Parker sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in loose paper pants and shirt with paper slippers on his feet. Mo guessed he was a little over six feet, broad-shouldered, his dark blond hair short on the sides but long enough in front to fall almost to his eyes. He was leafing through a magazine, his lips mouthing words, head bobbing, body swaying as if he were singing and moving to music.

When they came close to his cage, he looked up and went still. Round gray eyes. He had a pleasant, almost boyish face, full lips and cheeks. At first glance Mo couldn't imagine him as a guy who had tortured and killed seven people. But looking closer, you could see something haywire. A look of confusion and desperation on his creased, lopsided brow.

"Hello, Ronald," Rebecca said. "I'm Rebecca, and this is my friend Morgan. Do you mind if we talk to you?"

For a moment Parker just looked at them. Then his head bobbed, left and right, up and down, could mean anything, but Rebecca took it as an assent. She moved her chair close to the wire mesh and sat down. Mo sat off to the side.

"Thanks." Rebecca looked around approvingly. "This is a nice room, isn't it? They're very nice here, aren't they?"

Parker bobbed and nodded, yes or no or maybe.

"Do you remember seeing me before?" Rebecca asked pleasantly. For the hundredth time, Mo was impressed by her: Her voice was warm with real compassion, but everything about her approach was strategic. She had put her recorder in her jacket's side pocket and started it before they'd come to Parker's cage. He could see where her background in child psychology would come in handy in a case like this.

Parker's shoulders shrugged, but then they started moving up and down and around, again as if he were moving to music or working out a muscle kink. He did look intrigued by Rebecca, though, his eyes riveted to her.

"Morgan and I drove up to see if you're happy here. Dr. Iberson says you hurt yourself, and we wanted to make sure you're all right."

"Hurt everything," Parker said. His voice startled Mo, a smooth, bank teller's conversational voice at odds with his crazed-looking, uneven brow. "You got that right.
Everything."

"I do know what you mean," Rebecca said wryly.
Ain't that the
truth!
Mo knew she was pleased to get a response out of him. They'd gotten lucky, caught him in a receptive moment. Or maybe it was just Rebecca's presence, her skill. Parker's willy-nilly forehead creased in appreciation of her understanding.

They went on like that for fifteen minutes: the weird, weighted pleasantries, Rebecca's oblique probes, Parker's cryptic responses. Sometimes the murderer would clam up, frown, pull away. Sometimes he'd ramble incoherently. Throughout, Rebecca stayed warm, focused, easy, compassionate. She never pushed too hard, just stuck to the friendly, unassuming tone. Never probed too persistently, never oversteered. Never tried to
control
Parker. Mo just observed, did his best to disappear.

The only movable objects in Parker's room were a collection of magazines, some toilet articles, and the TV remote, which were arranged along the edge of the stainless steel countertop: magazine, hairbrush, magazine, hand lotion, magazine, toothpaste, magazine, tissue box, magazine, remote. At one point, Rebecca pointed to the pattern and said, "That's pretty. That makes it better, doesn't it?"

"Then it doesn't hurt," Parker said. "You have to get it right. It's important."

Rebecca nodded. "When I was a kid, my mother used to make me straighten up the top of my dresser? I had all these plastic horses and I'd dump them there when I was done playing with them, in a great big tangle. I was supposed to have them in a row. She'd get so mad at me! I wouldn't get dessert if I didn't do it, and one time she called my father and he had to swat my bottom!" She chuckled ruefully at the memory. "What did they do to you if you didn't?"

Parker had listened with growing intensity, and now his whole body was dancing to the nonexistent music again. He frowned and looked away. After a moment he stood up and began working at the counter, rearranging things.

"I bet you had to get the strings on your wrists," Rebecca said quietly.

Parker moved his hands hurriedly among the objects. Strong hands, Mo saw. He could see the faint discoloration of scarring on the wrists just below the cuffs.

"I would hate that," Rebecca prompted. "That would make me very angry."

Parker was rocking his whole body as he moved the objects into configuration after configuration. "Anger is an appropriate and necessary response," he said unexpectedly. "Provided you focus it. Your anger is a great source of energy. It's a source of power."

Rebecca took the change of tone in stride. "Did you get angry when they did it to you?"